There aren't many games like Harvest Moon. A "social simulator", for want of a better word, where farming often felt like a handy backdrop to the main part of the game, which came from chatting to, and, if you played your cards right, romancing the villagers, the series was something of a departure from the usual game, to say the least. Along with its spin-off cousin Rune Factory, and potentially Animal Crossing or the Sims, Harvest Moon was something of a rarity, but one that garnered a large, and passionate fan base for each instalment. Then, something strange happened. Series creator, Yasuhiro Wada left the series after the Wii's Harvest Moon: Animal Parade to work for Grasshopper Manufacture, a studio most famous for incredibly gory, and often controversial games. After a brief spell on Deadly Premonition, Wada decided in a change of career once again, leaving Grasshopper to start up his own studio, Toy Box Inc, where he made something of a return to his roots. With a superstar line-up of developers, Hometown Story is his latest project - a game about running a shop in a small village, and the people that come in. We sat down with Wada to learn a little bit more about what makes the game tick.
While you've always been known for your work on Harvest Moon, you recently had a bit of a change of pace as you left to work on Deadly Premonition, a game that's probably as far away from Harvest Moon as it's possible to get. Now, however, you're with a new studio working on Hometown Story, a game that seems to have fairly similar themes - what was it that made you come back to the social sim, Harvest Moon-style games
So I think the style of the new game will be different from Harvest Moon. It's not that I thought consciously that 'ok, I want to do something similar to Harvest Moon'. I just had this other idea in my heart that I started developing. One reason why I developed a new game, is that as you know, Harvest Moon has been continuing for a long time already - almost twenty years - and the main concept of Harvest Moon is to grow crops, to take care of animals, and human relationships. As the game's grown bigger and bigger, the series has had a lot of new features, which kind of makes the original concept a bit difficult to find any more. And I didn't really like that so much, so I thought I should do something new and start over, concentrating on the concept I think is most important - the human relationships - and build up the new game around the topic of human relationships.
So, what's the story with Hometown Story? What's the game all about?
Serving the people that come into your shop is the name of the game.
So the game starts when the player comes back to his home town, when they've grown up and have been away for a long time [in order to run a shop]. The player themselves does not have a ready-made story behind him, but we have about 30 characters in the game with very carefully and deeply developed stories, and by interacting with these characters in the game, [as they come into the shop] the player comes to know these characters - about their wishes, their needs, the things they are sad about, the things they are happy about - and you'll starts to develop your own story through knowing the characters in the game.
So relationships are still a very important part of the game?
The most important in my game, yes!
Can you tell us about the team you've got together for this game? With Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu providing the soundtrack, and Pokemon artist Atsuko Nishida designing the characters, it's got something of a superstar line-up - how did the team come together?
Well actually, that was quite easy, because both Ms. Nishida and Mr. Uematsu have been friends of mine for a long time, so we used to go out for a drink or out for a dinner together, and we'd talk about this and that. And one day I told them about my new idea, about the new game, and they said "Wow, that sounds interesting to us. If you make this game please ask us to join your team. We want to support you throughout the thing.". And so that's how we did it - quite easy really!
How come you chose to go with a handhelds, in the 3DS, rather than a home console like the Playstation 3 or Wii U?
Well one reason is a very practical reason - for consoles you need a huge budget behind you. For a new IP we don't know how [well it will do] and it was a bit risky for us to do it for a console, so we chose a handheld. The reason why we chose the 3DS was that I thought, personally, it's a better game machine than, for example, Smart Phones - I really like a machine where the main purpose of it is gaming.
If it does well is there a chance that it may come to home consoles in the future, or will it just stay on handhelds?
Of course as a game developer I would be very happy to develop the game also for the console, but the content has to be much richer than it is for handhelds. I think it's something that's possible, but something for the future - first we'll have to see. Of course as a developer and designer I would love to do it.
Aside from the fact you're running a shop, how else does Hometown Story differ from Harvest Moon? Is it more story-driven?
"How's the shop, yo?" Is that how the kids speak nowadays?
So what I think is the main difference... While we also had the topic of human relationships in Harvest Moon, in recent years the topic of human relationships was a bit limited to marriage. With Harvest Moon it almost seems like the main goal of the game is getting married, with the number of persons you could marry rising gradually. While that is fine and people are enjoying it, it's ok for me, but I think human relationships are much more, with a much bigger variety - there's also relations between friends, between parents and children, between people who've just met for the first time, maybe in the shop, and I want to create a game which shows the whole variety of different possibilities - of course one possibility is marriage, but it's not the only one. And with Harvest Moon the topic of human relations seems to be strictly to marriage, but I wanted to show all the different varieties, so I came up with a simple and compact game built around the topic of different kinds of human relationships.
How does that come into the gameplay, the different types of relationships?
So in the game we have about 35 main characters and they're all very different characters. We have very funny people, serious people - a broader range, maybe, than any other game before, because they behave very differently. By interacting with them as a player you will see "oh, there are a lot of different kind of people" and you can have relationships with them. All different kinds of relationships with them. And that's what I wanted to create with my game.
Is marriage still an important option in the game then?
Well, it's one of the options in the game, but it's not like you have to find someone to marry. You don't have to in Harvest Moon as well, but many people want to have it. It is possible because I know my players would like to have this option, but it's just one of many important kinds of relationships between people.
The Harvest Moon games usually have various festivals and events to attend during the year - from Cooking Contests and New Year's celebrations to the Harmony Days where you give gifts to your friends to show you appreciate them and romantic Starry Night Festivals where you and your husband-to-be go to make a wish on a falling star. Does Hometown Story have anything similar?
I personally had the feeling that by giving presents to the person you like, and that by giving more and more you could be successful in Harvest Moon - I didn't like that concept so much. So we don't have presents in Hometown Story, but we might have, after a couple gets married, some gimmicks. Just not to attract somebody. And we have a lot of stories around festivals - it's a bit different from what you know from the other game, but there are stories around the topic of festivals and there are some festivals, yes.
Seemingly, your sprite will be one of your friends
One of the things amongst the initial artwork that caught our eye was the ember characters - a cute sprite type thing. What do they do in the game?
Ember is one of the characters which has one of the deep stories. And it's the one which is unlocked a little bit by some of the others. And you can look forward to how this character will change by interacting with the player. (Pretty mysterious - Ed)
So what else is there to do in the game besides running a store? Is there anything else going on in the town?
There is nothing special you have to do in the city, but all the characters are walking around and you will learn about their characters and about their background. You will know what they might need or you'll realise "if I want this I have to ask him", and the player will be running around behind them to try to talk to them. And you can also go to the woods and get some vegetables or some mushrooms or something there, but you don't build up the village itself. Also you need things to sell in your shop, so by talking to the people you might be able to get things you can sell in your shop, or perhaps you need to go to certain places to receive something you can sell.
When the game was originally announced it was called 'Project Happiness' - where did that name come from and why has it had a name change recently?
So Project Happiness was a codename which Natsume, our publisher in the US came up with. The game is a collaboration between Rising Star Games and my own company Toy Box and Natsume, so we used it as a working title when developing the game. And it was a codename from Natsume.
So there's no special meaning behind it or anything?
Yes and no.
I mean, in the world at the moment where every big game seems to be a first person shooter or a really military sort of game, how important is it to have games like this for everybody else? To create an alternative and show there are other games besides just shooters?
Well maybe it's not so much related to the working title of Project Happiness, but I myself think about the world of games - fighting and shooting - and wanted something more peaceful.
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Hometown Story is scheduled for a release in early 2014 on the 3DS. For more on the game, and how it works, why not check out our recent preview from when we went hands-on with the game.
